Sailing In Style

Uncle Boris was swathed in a “kiss the cook” apron. He wielded a spoon. “Just in time. The feast is served.”

The yellow glop could have been caviar and lobster and she wouldn’t have relished it any more as she grabbed a paper plate and sat. “Why is Mrs. Rapapeet angry?”

He joined her at the crooked table and tucked his napkin into his collar. “‘They do not love that do not show their love.’”

“Two Gentlemen of Verona,” she said automatically, “and Mrs. Rapapeet liked you when I left this morning, so what happened?”

“Women,” he shrugged. “Speaking of, I visited your mother. It’s meat loaf day—her favorite.”

Instead of wasting away in prison, Piper’s mother, SueBeth Brindle, had gained fifteen pounds. She maintained that she deserved the extra weight, but not the prison time. During Piper’s visits she would often lament that her downfall was not that she’d broken into the lawyer’s condo to steal his stamp collection, but that she’d panicked when she’d found him at home and smacked him with a fireplace poker. Purely out of instinct, and it left only a small bruise, but the California penal system did not concur. She was sentenced to two years in prison for first-degree burglary.

Piper patted her uncle’s hand. The guilt shimmered in his eyes as it always did after a prison visit with his sister.

“Only twelve months to go.”

He put down his fork and rubbed a plump hand over his face. “I blame myself.”

“She doesn’t.”

“She should.”

Uncle Boris had used the bits of conversational flotsam he’d acquired in his airport shuttle job the year before to glean that the man with the expensive stamp collection would be out of town. An easy job, or it would have been, if the guy hadn’t eaten a bad clam and gone home sick instead of catching his flight to Cincinnati. Boris had been home with a twisted ankle and unaware that his sister had assigned the job to herself. When SueBeth was arrested, Boris had been ready to take full responsibility for planning the heist, but SueBeth begged her brother to stay clear.

“Someone has to look out for Piper.”

And he had. Sort of.

Desperate to cheer him, Piper swallowed the last of the mac and cheese. “Spooley worked on a scene with me tonight. He really thinks I’m good, Uncle Bo. When he sees me in the show, he’ll have no doubts.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you think he’ll make good on his promise to recommend you to Dizz?”

“If he sticks around long enough and convinces Dizz to come.”

“I watched Dizz’s show last night. He took the participants through these really weirdo acting exercises. Only six more episodes until we find out who he’s gonna pick as the winner.”

“And that lucky person lands an agent and a spot on a prime time show.” She sighed, biting her lip.

“Afraid Spooley will leave prematurely, before Steamboat Races opens?”

She sighed again. “Maybe. There’s been a sort of upheaval. Spooley dropped some hints that the decor was not up to snuff, so the boat manager has blackmailed someone to restyle the reception room into something star-worthy. If Spooley thinks it measures up, he’ll invite Dizz to come in a couple of weeks and see the show while he’s here. It’s my ticket to getting a spot on Acting Up.” She frowned.

“Complications?” Boris opened the cage for Peaches, his little yellow parakeet, and set him on his shoulder. The bird snuggled up against his chin.

“One.”

“Big one?”

About six feet. “Cy Franco is doing the renovations.”

“Ah.”

The syllable spoke volumes. Boris hadn’t met Cy, but Uncle Bo knew enough from what she had shared.

“If Cy can’t pull it off, Dizz won’t have a reason to come and see me. There goes the biggest chance of my career.”

He whistled to Peaches. “Buckle up, buttercup,” the little bird said in an exact imitation of her uncle’s voice.

Bo smiled. “There’s always another chance to score, Piper.”

“No more, Uncle Bo. We’re doing things the right way. We’re not that kind of family anymore, remember?” This was it. Her once-in-a-lifetime chance to seize the dream and remove herself from the loser list. And not only her. Someone had to keep the Brindle family on the straight and narrow. The more desperate the family became, the more her uncle’s mind fixed on plans to remedy their money problems the easiest way he knew how.

Stiffening her spine, she gathered up the paper plates, forming a concrete plan of her own. She’d work with Spooley, keep away from Cy and never, with a capital N, allow her uncle near any of them until she’d secured a spot with Dizz on his show—or died in the attempt. “So what happened with Mrs. Rapapeet?”

“I had to know.”

She groaned. “You broke in, didn’t you?”

“I just wanted a peek, to see what she kept in that locked garage. It was like Fort Knox.”

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone? Mrs. Rapapeet is entitled to her privacy.”

“I didn’t touch a thing. I let myself in and looked. Unfortunately, she found me snooping, and tomorrow I have to leave.”

She felt like screaming. Uncle Boris, left to his own devices for much of his youth, was compulsively, obsessively nosy.

“So,” she snapped. “Was it worth it? Breaking into her garage and getting evicted? Did you uncover a hoard of gold coins or an illegal printing press or something?”

“Wigs.”

“Wigs?”

He nodded solemnly. “She’s got them labeled by season.”

She let her head sink onto the table. “Where are we going to find a place as cheap as this?” she asked, voice muffled by the Formica.

“Actually—” he said, giving her a wink “—wait ’til you hear this.”

Her pulse revved up a notch. “Please tell me you didn’t do something crazy.”

“Buckle up, buttercup,” Peaches sang out again.

* * *

A BRILLIANT SUNRISE eased away the worry in Cy’s belly as he finished his run along the beach. There was no greater balm for the soul than crisp ocean air. Piper was gone from his mind. Today, he would hit Julio’s bookstore. If anyone had a musty old tome about the glory days of the paddle wheel steamboat, it would be the eclectic Julio, who organized his books by authors’ first names and scrawled receipts on yellow note pads.

He threw open the door to the Pelican Inn, now termite-free, and soaked in the details once more. It was the same beloved inn where he and his sister had spent their high school years after the death of their mother. With a father gone AWOL, his foster aunt, Bitsy, had taken them in during those tumultuous years. He and Rosa had refurbished the old inn as part of a contest a month ago. They’d lost the contest, but the inn was spectacular, and Rosa had won herself a prize of a husband in Pike, his arrogant tendencies notwithstanding. The Pelican was now an elegant office building housing Pike’s struggling law practice, the Francos’ Dollars and Sense Design and rooms for them to live in on the top floor. Bitsy and Manny had found a nice little place of their own away from the inn.

It was a shame, in a way. The old, ramshackle structure, perched on a cliff overlooking a sparkling cove, was meant to draw visitors, not commerce. Truth was, Cy might have liked to try his hand at innkeeping for a while. He figured he had the people skills, but Bitsy was right: Running an inn was just too much work, especially since she and Manny were starting off a new married life and Dollars and Sense required Cy’s complete attention.